Princeton Ave., Corona del Mar & Balboa Island

We took a day off in the middle of our Disney adventure to do a little sight seeing. Our first stop was to drive by the homes in Costa Mesa that Josh's parents grew up in. Josh & the boys are standing in front of the Princeton house, the home where Shauna grew up. There is a picture of her standing by this (now dead) tree when she was a little girl. The house was a little worn, but the neighborhood looked great & some new owners were in the process of fixing up the home.

 This is the home that Brad grew up in. The street address has been re-numbered & it has brick, but it (supposedly) looks basically the same.

 Lander, entertaining himself during the drive

 After driving around the old haunts, we stopped by Corona del Mar to play a little frisbee.

 then we looked around at the tide pools & snapped a few photos

 the boys have never seen a tide pool before, so this was very interesting to them

While we were taking pictures & looking for critters in the tide pools, the seagulls decided to rampage our picnic. They were so bold, tearing our towels off of our brown paper sack & tearing into our lunch and ripping a bag of chips into pieces. For a while there, we thought they had even made off with a pair of Lander's underwear--dirty underwear--until we found it a while later. Apparently they are discriminating birds.

After playing at the beach, we met up with Karen Moeller (Grams' best friend) who had graciously offered to host us during the Disney portion of our California vacation. She took us to Balboa Island, and Josh & I instantly fell in love with the vintage homes. She even treated us to a ferry ride to get to the island. The boys LOVED it. Here's Jake standing in front of the car on the ferry. The ferry holds 2-3 cars.

After driving around a bit, Karen treated us (imagine that, letting us stay at her house & then treating us? I feel like we should have been scrubbing her toilets for a week just for putting up with our choas!) to dinner at the Crab Cooker. Jake & I both had crab. Lander wished he would've ordered one too. I think he ate almost half of my dinner! Karen wouldn't pose with us for the picture, so we'll just have to imagine here standing with us. P.S. She was quite the amazing hostess!! I don't think that I can say that enough!!

After dinner we stopped by Newport beach....Awww...but that's another post!